Twisted Transistor
by DollyPop12
Summary: The snake is inside of her and she cannot know. It is inside of Marie and it whispers that it belongs there: that Medusa belongs in her, coiled tightly in her chest. (MedusaMarie and SteinMarie)


_"Desire's a violent jackhammer of the heart when the world descends into helter skelter and the girls crawl in for shelter"_

~ Lilith/Eve by Machines of Loving Grace

* * *

She dreams. She dreams and dreams and it whispers, and Marie falls. Or, she thinks she does. She doesn't know where she is in all that darkness, doesn't know what is around her.

"Poor dear, poor dear," a voice calls, a mocking hiss in her head, and Marie turns, her chest heaving. She wants to transform, but she can't, she can't and she doesn't know why. Marie says nothing, only bends her knees, settling into a defensive stance, her head turning periodically in order to compensate for the blind spot on her left: all the good it would do if she cannot see at all.

"Poor dear-" the voice whispers, right in her ear, and Marie whirls, her tightened fist flicking out furiously with a cry, but there is nothing there. Her pale, slim hand passes through air, passes through the darkness, but the momentum spun her around. When the voice comes into her other ear, she cannot whir back fast enough.

"How pathetic of you: pining after a man who cannot love," it says, and Marie kicks at nothing, her feet strangely bare, her body going cold.

"Bullshit," she claims, sounding near hysterical but steely. "He loves science, he loves his students-" but all she gets in response is a chuckle, amused and dark.

"Oh, fine, fine. But he cannot love you, and you know that, don't you?"

Marie says nothing, her singular eye flicking around until she feels dizzy and sick, her stomach sinking. The laughter is all around her, and she is all alone. There is nothing she can see in that room, if it even is one. All there is, just blackness, inky and plain. She worries that if she throws her limbs out far enough, they will be swallowed by some creature in those shadows.

"Poor dear, poor dear," the voice says, and Marie grinds her teeth down, all her muscles on edge while she brings her elbows close to her sides. It will come out, eventually. Eventually.

She feels stony, but brittle. There is something in the air that warns her that if she opens her mouth, it will slither down her throat and leave her wordless, worldless, will leave her whirling with fingers spread wide for some savoir and there will be nothing to grasp her hand. She feels stretchy and thin but fragile, yet stiff, like frozen taffy. She feels as though she will simply break open with the slightest touch.

And she gasps when she feels it, cold, slimy, the whisper of something smooth and frigid, and when she looks down at her feet, the snake has her, has her by the ankles and she cannot move, only shifting when there is a hand on her chest, shoving her backward so hard it feels like her sternum has opened, flesh flaying at the iciness.

The chair beneath her is unwelcome, and she knows it wasn't there before, but she cannot move. She can't open her mouth, she can't squirm. When she looks up, she feels a jolt in the marrow of her bones because the shadows have hollowed his face, because he's in front of her, suddenly.

Stein's expression is a caricature of him, lips stretched over his teeth, the cigarette chewed at the filter by his canines, and he is so close to her, their noses almost touching. How did he get so close? How did he find his way through that darkness that pressed into each piece of her? He looked at her like he was starved, and she didn't know how to react to it, to him.

She has never been afraid of him, could never be afraid of him, only for him, but now, oh, now he churns her stomach and she wants to move away. She wants to move away but she can barely even breathe and when he comes in closer, lips almost brushing over her own, her eye opens wide and stares as the dull olive of his morph and grow snake-like.

She wants to claw at him, or claw at something, claw at anything when he takes her breath away, the cigarette flicking down into her lap but not burning when he grasps the back of her head and shoves her face at an angle so their mouths meet at all the wrong edges.

Marie tastes copper, she tastes it sweeping over his tongue until it is choking her and she is sobbing, unknowing why she can't bring her hands up, why she has closed her eye and bent to him. It isn't him, she tells herself, and the chuckling has grown higher, louder. It isn't him but she opens her mouth. It isn't him because this Stein is pulling her hair and his tongue is freezing and forked and she wants to weep. It isn't him, it isn't, it isn't. She feels shattered. She wants to struggle and buck and kick and scream and the snake is coming from around her ankles up her skirt and she feels it circle her thighs in an infinite loop, going no higher, no lower. It isn't him, it can't be. When his hand comes to her throat, fingers clamping, it is hot as the cherry of a cigarette and suddenly he bites down on her lower lip until the blood wells and he pulls away with the flesh still held tight. He lets go of her hair and she feels his hand follow the snake, feels his calloused palm slide over her knee and higher higher higher until her eye snaps open to look at him because she has started panting and arching.

When she looks at him, it isn't him, just as she has told herself all along.

She jerks away, finally, finally because she knows that face, knew it in pictures, in WANTED ads plastered over the city, in newspapers: that twisted, grinning face that had her lip in its teeth and the "poor dear" has taken on the silkiest tone she has ever heard, the snake around her thighs still looping and twisting, the hand gone so quickly she wonders if it ever truly existed in the first place.

Marie is shaking when it is Medusa in front of her, Medusa who grins and laughs and there is no cigarette in Marie's lap, there never was, and Medusa comes in and whispers something but she cannot make it out because there is a snake twining round Marie's wrists, hissing in her ear. Medusa shoves her, again, forcing her sternum open, again, and Marie has the feeling of falling, again, because there is no chair, not anymore, only a floor in a room that seems bottomless.

She bucks, she twists her hands round and round and her back hurts when she arches up, helpless to the clutches she has found herself in.

"How pathetic," Medusa says, her face amused, still standing. "You barely even fought him."

"Shut up!" Mare yells out, thrashing.

"You really are desperate, aren't you? How sad."

Marie throws her head side to side, trying to dislodge the snake's tail caressing her cheek, settling over her neck.

"You're no better, you witch," Marie spits.

When Medusa walks to Marie's felled body, her bound body, the woman's manicured feet make no noise. She looks as if she is floating, but she comes over Marie, bending until their faces are close.

"It's all so amusing, that you think he would ever kiss you. What are you to Stein, anyway?" Medusa teased, her hair tickling Marie's face. Her hand comes over the tied woman's breast, feeling the heart thumping frantically, so delicate and fragile, beating like a hummingbird's wings and she thinks it would be so delicious to hold it. Marie feels so broken at the touch, so cold. It radiates through her, Medusa's grasp a death's stroke, a curse, a promise. "Hmm?" the reptilian woman prods, and Marie licks her lips, throat compressing with the snake's touch.

She says nothing, her eye blinking so sweetly, wetly.

She is a beautiful woman, her smooth face tinged with sorrow, her ample chest heaving, her hips bucking, trying to dislodge the hold on her. When she fights, the flush on her face, the flush from strain and from what happened prior, gets deeper.

Medusa's giggle is dark and mocking, her hand coming over Marie's stomach, slithering up her side until it settles under her ribcage. "Pathetic," she repeats, before the snake tightens more over Marie's neck, holding her in place so Medusa can kiss her, all poison and teeth and static white noise that has Marie gasping and burning inside, ignited spine to belly.

The snake-woman smiles when Marie squirms, laughing when she pulls away. "Surely, a woman so devoted wouldn't give in so easily?" Medusa taunts, but Marie's amber eye is panicked and the woman is swallowing saliva that is not only her own and that sickens her so badly she heaves, but Medusa only laughs again.

Everything feels jagged when Medusa's lips come back upon Marie while the prone woman sucked in breath, and Medusa slithered her tongue into her mouth, swallowing the whimpers. She only retracts it to lick and suck at Marie's lip until the woman wails out: Medusa's hand on her ribs is warm and pleasant, no nails, yet, and the snake has moved up, again, stroking her thighs and Marie can pretend, her eye closing. And even when the grasp turns painful, even when there is a snakebite coming down upon her inner thighs, too high up to lie about and hide, Marie finds herself squirming for new reasons. The laughter, she realizes, is not coming from in front of her or around, but inside her, bubbling in her bones and Medusa bites onto Marie's lip until the blood is coming over both of their chins, Marie's blood, and it drips down down down.

Medusa's fingers gently caress over Marie's face until, suddenly, her eyepatch is gone and those fingers are in her, in the empty socket, filling her and it hurts, it hurts so badly she wants to scream so she does. She opens her mouth and she is crying into the blackness, of Medusa's mouth, of the room that is not a room, of the night she has awakened to.

She is sweating and heaving and the door slams open so loudly she has to flinch and curl up, head between her knees while she dry-retches.

"Marie!?" Stein calls, panicked, his heart beating hard, throbbing after being torn from his own nightmares. His massive form takes up almost the entire doorway until he moves to her, and she is gasping and shaking and shivering.

They take care of each other, now, that was the promise. But he was so accustomed to it being one-sided, to Marie needing no help, no holding, no protection from the night: he is unsure what to do. He is the one who has visions of things not there, the one who needs a hand on his shoulder, the one who needs. When he comes even closer to her, he can hear that all she is muttering is "A nightmare, just a nightmare, just a dream, I'm sorry," and he can only repeat "Marie," so softly she cannot hear him.

Marie murmurs her apologies when Stein sets a hand on her back, right between her shoulder blades, knowing how terrible dreams can be when they wear such horrible masks yet unknowing how to help when his palms have only touched dead things before, or things destined for death. But he does not make prophecies, his grasp is not that of Lord Death: he can feel her vertebrae beneath his hand and she is breathing and alive. She needs. So he provides, if just this once that will never be just once, he comforts best he can. It is an imitation of intimacy. That's all it can ever be. That's all it should ever be, but he wishes he could detach further, be less genuine about it all. He is just solidity and warmth, a presence no one but she could ever find comfort in. Marie feels his touch on her back and she bends to him, just as in her dream, she bends to him and all she hears is Medusa in her ears for one painful, fragile moment, telling her that she isn't even fighting, but Stein is warm and there and she does not want to fight.

And in her tomb of pillars, Medusa smiles at her crystal orb and listens to the weeping, and shakes her head as though in sympathy.

"Poor, poor dear."

When she licks her lips, she tastes copper.

* * *

 **Written for day 2 of Angst Week: the prompt was "Nightmare" and I thought it might be interesting to imagine a scenario where Marie was having a nightmare, since she's usually considered someone who is immune, but Medusa DID have a snake in her, so I thought this could be cool to write!**


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